Transforming Verification Effort into Business Value in Avionics 

Ultra­Da­tel stream­lined ver­i­fi­ca­tion activ­i­ties for greater effi­cien­cy and long-term cost sav­ings with LDRA tool suite. 

What is it about

Help­ing Datel reduce man­u­al effort with auto­mat­ed test gen­er­a­tion, regres­sion test­ing, and stan­dards com­pli­ance, cre­at­ing a stream­lined ver­i­fi­ca­tion process that deliv­ered mea­sur­able busi­ness value.

Meet the customer 

Ultra Elec­tron­ics Datel (Datel) is part of the Ultra Elec­tron­ics Group and has been in busi­ness for over 25 years. Datel spe­cialis­es in mis­sion and safe­ty crit­i­cal soft­ware for Def Stan 00-55 / 00-56 & RTCA/DO-178B. 
Datel also pro­vides ser­vices in sys­tems inte­gra­tion, con­sul­tan­cy and secure infor­ma­tion man­age­ment solu­tions. 

The Project at a Glance 

Ultra had 2 key projects which utilise TASKING’s LDRA: 

  • Wing Ice Pro­tec­tion Sys­tem (WIPS) for the Boe­ing 787 Dream­lin­er, RTCA/DO-178B Level A. 
  • Engine Ice Pro­tec­tion Sys­tem (EIPS) for the Pratt and Whit­ney F135 Engine on the Light­ning II (Joint Strike Fight­er) project. 

Meeting the Demands of Safety-Critical Verification 

Datel had spe­cif­ic tech­ni­cal require­ments includ­ing the abil­i­ty to inte­grate with their tar­get envi­ron­ment which includ­ed the Texas Instru­ments TMS320F2812 and TMS320F2808 DSPs. Datel made full use of LDRA’s com­plete struc­tur­al cov­er­age analy­sis solu­tion at Unit, Inte­gra­tion and Sys­tem Test Lev­els. These tests were applied to both source and object code, mak­ing use of the red-box mode with­in the LDRA tool suite.

It was impor­tant to Datel that it was able to devel­op their soft­ware to a known cod­ing stan­dard and, con­se­quent­ly, MISRA-C was select­ed to be applied to this code. The sim­ple process with­in the LDRA tool suite of enforc­ing var­i­ous stan­dards using drop down menus was very impor­tant for Datel.

Datel also need­ed an auto­mat­ed and intu­itive unit test­ing tool which would save time, free up high­ly qual­i­fied staff, increase test effi­cien­cy and improve moti­va­tion to test through a repeat­able, less error-prone process. 

Saving £2 Million Through Automated Verification Process  

“The reduc­tion in man­u­al effort includ­ed the auto­mat­ic pro­duc­tion of com­plex test har­ness­es and stub code by the unit test­ing tool with­in LDRA tool suite, which we would oth­er­wise have had to write man­u­al­ly.” 

“We found that the graph­i­cal user inter­face was easy to work with and made devel­op­ing a rapid, intu­itive test process a lot eas­i­er than cre­at­ing it man­u­al­ly. This sav­ing was fur­ther increased through the repeata­bil­i­ty of tests util­is­ing the auto­mat­ed regres­sion test­ing facil­i­ties. This auto­mat­ed solu­tion made our job a lot eas­i­er.” 

“When we gen­er­at­ed tests, they were more main­tain­able and eas­i­er to change than if we had pro­duced them man­u­al­ly.” 

“We found that, from a cod­ing per­spec­tive, the abil­i­ty to con­sis­tent­ly and accu­rate­ly con­form to stan­dards and guide­lines togeth­er with all the other fea­tures of the LDRA tool suite assist­ed in sav­ing Datel £2 mil­lion over a 4-year peri­od because of pro­vid­ing a high­ly stream­lined and auto­mat­ed ver­i­fi­ca­tion process.”

-— Tom Roberts, Engi­neer­ing Man­ag­er, Embed­ded Soft­ware and Sys­tems 

Looking Ahead 

The LDRA tool suite has assist­ed Datel in dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduc­ing the time taken to con­firm the ver­i­fi­ca­tion results and has increased the repeata­bil­i­ty of our process.

Datel can reuse infor­ma­tion on other projects using the same tool chain, as well as hav­ing the abil­i­ty to effec­tive­ly mod­i­fy and review alter­na­tive tool chains. 
Tom Roberts com­ment­ed: 
“As the LDRA tool suite is able to eas­i­ly jump between host and tar­get test­ing on the click of a mouse, Datel will seek to use it on all future projects.” 


Curious what this could look like for you? Great results start with the right tools.

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